Wednesday, September 17, 2008

New Life Bird

In happier news, yesterday was a great day for finding migrants around Cape May. Well, it was not so great for seeing hawks, but there was a huge influx of everything else. Apparently some of the sites were packed with warblers. I visited the state park after work and found that quite a few warblers were still active. While I did not get the numbers that some people found (and missed a chance at a Cape May warbler), what I lacked in numbers I made up for in quality. I found a new life bird: a Connecticut warbler!

So now, the only eastern warblers that I have not seen are Kirtland's, Swainson's, and golden-winged. Of those, golden-winged is the only bothersome one, since the other two are really localized specialties.

At one of the banding sites, kestrels have been putting on quite a show, with up to a dozen in the field at once. However, they seem more interested in eating crickets and chasing each other around than flying into the nets, so we have only banded one so far.